Creative Commons Receives Grant to Improve Search

August 11, 2018

Creative Commons, a global nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and reuse of creativity and knowledge through the provision of free legal tools, has announced an $800,000 grant over two years from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, in support of CC Search, a Creative Commons technology project designed to maximize discovery and use of openly licensed digital content.

Comprised of more than 1.4 billion CC-licensed, public domain, and other openly licensed works, the digital commons includes myriad content types, from open educational resources (OER) and scientific research to 3D models, video games, and VR landscapes. Despite the tremendous growth of digital content and widespread use of CC licenses in recent years, however, there has been no user-friendly way to maximize discovery, use, and engagement with that content.

Through the development of the Commons Collaborative Archive and Library — a suite of tools that will include CC Search, a Commons Metadata Library, and a Commons API — Creative Commons aims to make openly licensed digital content more searchable, usable, and resilient, while providing critical infrastructure for online communities to collaborate. Project elements will include an index of every openly licensed and public domain work on the Web (the Library); an API enabling developers to query the metadata library and develop services and integrations for openly licensed content; and CC Search, which will make it easy for users to scan a wide range of openly licensed digital content through a single interface.